The Cognitive Area is excited to host a talk by developmental cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Kalina Michalska, from UC Riverside.
Title
Maladaptive responding to the distress of others: Insights from developmental neuroscience
Abstract
A fundamental question in developmental affective science is how children come to understand the emotions of others when deciding how to behave towards them. One consequential domain of such an ability is responding to others’ distress with empathy and kindness. In this talk, I will explore the neurobiological and social factors that lead some children to respond maladaptively to the distress of another- that is, with either aggression or fear. Together, these data point to important interactions between temperamental predispositions and affective learning processes that underlie how individual differences in emotion reactivity are expressed and how they relate to disruptive behavior and anxiety across development.
About
Dr. Kalina Michalska is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside, and Director of the Kids Interaction and NeuroDevelopment Lab. Michalska is also member of the Program in Neuroscience, the Department of Psychiatry at the School of Medicine, and the Presley Center for Crime and Justice Studies. She received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the University of Chicago and spent four years as a fellow at the NIMH Intramural Research Program, under the mentorship of Dr. Daniel Pine.
Michalska combines neuroimaging (fMRI), autonomic measures, and behavior observations to understand the neural systems underlying emotional processes engaged by the distress of others. She is interested in how those processes mature across development, how individual differences are expressed, and how these emotional processes relate to disruptive behavior problems and anxiety in childhood and beyond.
